Search All 1 Records in Our Collections

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The Museum’s Collections document the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more. Search below to view digital records and find material that you can access at our library and at the Shapell Center.

Samuel Gotz. (1895 -1983). Born in Siauliai, Lithuania. He was a lifelong Zionist, was a leader in the early formation of moden Zionism and the Hachalutz movement in Petrograd (Petersburg) in Russia and in the Baltic states. He knew, and worked with many of the leaders of the Zionist movement including Chaim Weitzman, Josef Trumpeldor, Nachum Sokolov, Ussishkin and vladimir Jabotinski. after 1935 he lived in Southern Rhodesia where he was very active in the Zionist organization.

Elly Gotz lived in Kaunas, Lithuania with his parents, Sonja and Julius Gotz. When he was 13, the Nazis confined them to the Kovno Ghetto, along with 29,000 other Lithuanian Jews. After two years in the ghetto, Elly and his father were separated from his mother and sent to Dachau concentration camp. They remained there until the camp was liberated in April, 1945. After the war he and his parentsmoved for a while to Rhodesia where they reunited with Samuel.

Learn about over 1,000 camps and ghettos in Volume I and II of this encyclopedia, which are available as a free PDF download. This reference provides text, photographs, charts, maps, and extensive indexes.